Disclaimer: "Detective Conan" belongs to Gosho Aoyama.

Thanks a lot to my wonderful beta DoRaeMon (Astarael00 on this site or Rae00 on Livejournal), who has retired in the meantime.

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FS

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SARCASMS

(edited)

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Sarcasm I

"Tempestoso"

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"If you weren't so sarcastic..." he said after a long, embarrassing pause.

It wasn't the first time that I've heard that familiar sentence. And it wasn't the first time that I've heard that sentence from a guy who had tried to ask me out and who had been rejected by me a few minutes ago. Some of them would go away silently, trying to stay cool, giving me only a depressed smile of self-pity; others would leave without trying to hide their disappointment or sadness or misery whatever (which depends on the degree of their supposed affection for me); and a few of them—the bold ones—would say something like, "You're in love with the pianist I saw you talking to yesterday at lunch, right? But he's an idiot... He can't even play very well!" or "Why don't you want to give it a try?" or (although that happened only once!), "I don't want to be rude, but... you like girls, do you? Nelly told me about you yesterday evening when..."

Never mind! I never answered any of those questions, anyway. And yes, I knew that Nelly hated me. I didn't mind that either.

After throwing a fleeting sidelong glance at him, I could guess the expression I was wearing on my face as if I had looked into a mirror: Judging from the God-she's-really-the-coldest-girl-on-earth-look on his face, I guessed I was wearing the I'm-bored-to-death look (which was the most fitting look for what I was feeling when he was with me).

"I think you're afraid," he said solemnly as he kept walking beside me, "I only don't know what you're afraid of... I've been watching you for very long. You never let any guy come near you because..."

"See you tomorrow at the rehearsal," I said and began to search for my keys.

"What did you say?" He looked at me stupidly.

"I live here," I said to him, opened the door, and forced myself to pull my face into something that could be interpreted as a smile. "See you tomorrow."

"Miyano!"

"Hmm?"

"Can I come in? Only for a few minutes, we need to talk-"

"I'm sorry I don't have time now. See you tomorrow!"

I shut the door behind me. Who had ever thought that the best cellist of our school was a wannabe psychiatrist who couldn't accept a simple "No"? Of course I was sarcastic (I'd always been) and not very lovable. And sadly, I didn't have any excuse for this character trait except that my mother must have passed it like a gene on to me (except for the fact that she was lovable despite her sarcasm). Maybe there was really something like a sarcasm-gene? The arrogance-gene my father must have passed on to me, because I couldn't remember that I had ever seen my mother behaving arrogantly (and that exactly was the reason why she was lovable and I was not, I'd guess).

"Who is it this time?" the person who I had been thinking of asked. She was standing at the huge window of our small dining room with her arms folded in front of her chest. Once again I was struck by the thought that no one but her could look so beautiful in that ugly, oversized cardigan! While other girls in my school covered their walls with posters of musicians and movie stars, I would gladly have covered the walls in our apartment with photos of hers if I hadn't known that she would have sent me to a mental hospital afterwards.

"Just our first cellist." I dropped my bag onto the floor.

"And? How did he react? He didn't take it very well, I think. Look how he is staggering away. You weren't too cruel, I hope."

"No, I wasn't. I was nice before he tried to cure me from my supposed androphobia. But you're not looking well!"

I frowned at her pale face, red nose, and puffy eyes. She had been suffering from a nasty flu during the past three days, but refused to see a doctor.

"I'm fine," she said and settled herself into her armchair. "I'm only tired."

The afternoon light was shining on her pale face, showing clearly the rings around her redden eyes and the perspiration on her skin to me. In only two strides I was at her side, feeling her forehead with my hand.

"You're ill," I remarked. "You have fever. Wait, I'll call an ambulance."

"No!" She shook her head and rose. "I'm fine. I only have a small flu. Don't worry! I'll go to bed and take a nap now."

"If you're not better afterwards, I'll call an ambulance," I said, frowning at her. "I hate ambulances, too. But you should look into the mirror. You look like a ghost."

"Ah, yes," she replied absently and took a book from the shelf. "I think I only need a short nap."

"Mum! You're not going to read now, I hope!"

"I told you I'm fine. I'll finish the book and then I'll go to sleep. You can practise here in the meantime. What are you going to play today?"

"Prokofiev, Sarcasms." I fished the Sarcasms out of my bag. "But I won't neglect my chemical studies, so don't worry!"

"You don't need to do them only to please me," she said in a tired voice. "You can focus on your piano and practise for your next concert. I've forgotten... When is your next concert?"

"August, Prokofiev's Sarcasms, Chopin's Ballade No. 1, and Beethoven's Appassionata. Terrible combination, I know. Nobody on earth survives listening to all the five Sarcasms during one single evening."

"I do." She smiled.

"Yes, you're the only woman on earth who can." I smiled back.

Standing at the door of our dining room with one hand on the doorknob, blinking because the sun was blinding her, she smiled at me for the last time and shut the door behind her.

After she disappeared in our bedroom, I sat down on the piano stool and began to play the first Sarcasm slowly, quietly, partly because I didn't want to play tempestoso (with the great dynamic range between fortissimo and pianissimo) before my fingers were warm enough, and partly because I didn't want to disturb my mother in her sleep. The afternoon passed quickly with the first Sarcasm and the octaves at the end of Chopin's first Ballade (I always had problems playing the octaves due to my short fingers). Behind me, the sun was setting, bathing our dining room in a reddish-golden light.

I stopped playing and went to the bedroom, knocked at the door. "Hey," I said cheerily. "You've already slept for over four hours. You should come out and watch the sunset with me!"

She didn't answer, and I pushed the door open. Illuminated by the light of the setting sun, she was lying under the covers of her bed, looking paler than ever. On the screen of the TV a skinny blonde woman was telling her plump friend about her new diet yogurt. The remote control was lying on the floor.

I didn't need to feel her pulse to know that she was dead. And I didn't really remember what happened afterwards, as everything happened automatically, was done mechanically: calling a doctor ("I'm so sorry, but your mother must have had a very weak heart..."), filling the papers, organizing the funeral... I only remembered that no one came to her cremation a week later (no one except for the boys in my school who were in love with me and the girls who were in love with them, the director who was secretly in love with my mother and a few of my teachers who took pity on me). Her friends, if she had had any, didn't come. Not even my father, probably a scientist with ambition who had never bothered to marry my mother and whom I had never seen in my life, came...

A month after her death (I spent the first month slamming my fingers into the keys of my piano and playing the worst version of Prokofiev's Sarcasms the world had ever heard), when I went through her drawers, there was not one single letter, not one single photo except from the photos, the letters, and the postcards I had sent her. If my damned father had ever sent her any letters, she must have thrown them away.

You see, love is a fleeting passion which grows cold and forgetful with time, I thought, reminded of the countless silly boys who had approached me to confess their undying love. Maybe my father was like them, too. A scientist who had met her at college and who was fascinated by her beauty just as the lanky teenagers at my school by mine, who had asked her out, captured her heart with his promises and lies and made love to her and then left her for his career. Loving him was the biggest mistake she ever made in her life.

The only person I had ever loved was gone. All she left behind was a quite big sum of money she had saved for my musical or chemical career (I still didn't know whether I wanted to become a musician or a chemist like my parents), a library consisting of hundreds of books (she loved reading), a few drawers of clothes, the letters I had written to her... And I almost overlooked the sheet of newspaper at the bottom of her drawer, one of those tabloids she had never bothered to read (actually, she didn't even watch TV or read any newspaper before I bought the TV on a whim a week ago). It was sheer coincidence that I didn't throw the inconspicuous sheet of paper away before I had read the headline.

"SHINICHI KUDO HAS WON AGAIN!" the headline said. They were making a fuss about a Japanese detective (about my age) who had solved a mysterious murder in Tokyo. Judging from the photo, Shinichi Kudo was only a cocky young snob, good-looking in a boyish, rather uninteresting way, and I couldn't imagine why my mother should have been interested in him. But when I looked at the date, I realized that my mother must have bought it the day she died. She must have seen it at one of the newspaper stands on the way to the bank and bought it because something had caught her eye.

What could you have done to distress her so much, I asked the arrogant face, which was grinning at me. She was still young, not even forty years old. She was a strong woman. What could you have done to kill her?

I walked to the old TV program of the previous month, which I had placed on the pile of old papers (copies of scores, love letters addressed to me, advertisements) I wanted to throw away. And I learned that, in the afternoon my mother died, there had been a documentary about the crime in Japan (especially in Tokyo and Osaka) on BBC. They had been interviewing Shinichi Kudo, eighteen years old, private detective, living in Japan, Tokyo, Beika...

Why did I buy that damned TV, anyway? But how should I have known that she had had a weak heart?

s.

The scores of Prokofiev's Sarcasms, Chopin's Ballades, Mozart's and Beethoven's Sonatas, my laptop, chemical books my mother had given me on my seventeenth birthday (which I hadn't read yet), three tops, one jacket, three pairs of trousers, three dresses, three pairs of shoes, one sheet of newspaper, one pullover of my mother (to remind me why I was doing this!), and the most important papers... I had always loved packing suitcases. But this time, there was something gloomy about packing my clothes and books into the suitcase. And when I left the apartment, I had the feeling that—if I returned—I would never be the same again.

At the airport I saw many children with their parents, young and old couples, swarms of girls and boys who were going on holiday, men in pressed suits who were looking me up and down before they met my icy gaze. Most people were staring at me when I walked past them, maybe because they were wondering why I was travelling alone, unlike that girl waiting in front of me in the queue, who was taking the arm of her mother, chatting with her about cosmetics and a don't-know-what's-his-name boyfriend...

"Pretty hair," a ten-year-old boy said to me, grinning brazenly. "Are you travelling alone?" He threw a victorious glance at his small friends who were hiding behind the corner, holding their thumbs up. I almost had the feeling that he was trying to hit on me.

"Thanks," I said rather coldly. I didn't intend to. But coldness had become my second name.

"Ai Haibara, nice name," he remarked, indicating the ticket in my hand.

Ai Haibara... I didn't want to meet Shinichi Kudo under my real name. "Shiho Miyano" might sound familiar to him if he knew my mother or her family. And "Ai" somehow fitted my recent state of mind. Not love, but unending sorrow. And I didn't wear any other colour except for grey since she died. Even black seemed somehow too brilliant and too dramatic for the dull emptiness inside me. I told the director that I wanted to have a stage name before my debut in August and that I wanted to change my real name to "Ai Haibara". He didn't suspect anything and helped me go through the formalities necessary for changing the name on my passport and on my identity card. (I wanted to have my name on my passport changed into Ai Haibara so that Shinichi Kudo wouldn't discover my real name too soon.) Of course I should have done all these things on my own. But I had never learned to deal with authorities because I had never learned to put on a civil smile when I wished them to go to hell. I must mention my stubborn character, which (added to my sarcastic nature) had always caused endless trouble.

But I couldn't afford to be stubborn and sarcastic now. I would be sweet and nice and try to befriend myself with Shinichi-the-sleuth—how should I call him, Shinichi-san, Shinichi-sama, Shinichi-chan, Kudo-chan?... (I had never understood why Japanese people couldn't content themselves with a simple Mr or Mrs!). I would mime the holidaying Japanese who had spent her whole life in London, who would love to see more of Tokyo and who—by pure chance—had heard so much about the famous Shinichi Kudo that she had become one of his greatest fans. (The very thought of this made me sick!) But I would do anything to find out the connection between him and my mother's death. Where did he live? Beika Street? It almost sounded like Baker Street, which reminded me of Sherlock Holmes. One could only hope that he was not even half as smart and indifferent towards women as the greatest detective of the detective literature was (or was it Poirot, who was the greatest detective?). That would make the whole task a bit tougher for me.

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